12/24/2016 DAB Transcript

Today is the 24th day
of December, which makes it Christmas Eve.
What a holy day that it is as we kind of move toward the worldwide
celebration of the arrival of the Savior.
This is huge. So there will be
many candlelight services tonight all over the world, many midnight vigils
ringing in the new day, the day of the Savior’s arrival that we celebrate throughout
the earth. So Happy Christmas Eve to you. It’s beautiful that we can come around our
global campfire, warm ourselves, orient ourselves to God on this very, very
special day and take the next step forward in, like I said yesterday, our ever-diminishing
steps left in this year.

Even though it’s Christmas Eve
and all of those festivities that go with it, this is the last day of a week
and we’ve been reading from the Holman Christian Standard Bible this week, which
is what we’ll do today, and move to something new on Christmas Day, but for today,
Zechariah chapter 6 verse 1 through 7 verse 14.

Prayer

Lord, on this day our affections
are set on you, on this eve of the moment that we celebrate or commemorate your
arrival. And so once again, as we so often do, we thank
you for your word because your word reveals the great story of how you would not
surrender us, we who are created in your image, to the darkness, to our own
reality that we had created without you.
You would not leave us abandoned.
You came. You came so
counterintuitively that, well, most didn’t even know what was happening until the
victory was won. But then you handed this
victory into our hands and so we rejoice, and on this day, this sort of final
day that we wait, that we keep vigil, that we look and long for the arrival of the
Savior, we are also longing for your return.
So we love you. We love you, Jesus,
and we thank you. Come Holy Spirit into
all of our hearts, all of our lives and everything about us because this is
what the arrival, this is what the Advent of the Savior is all about – that we
are no longer separated from you but are intertwined with you. So come, fill our hearts as our hearts break
forth in rejoicing. We pray this in the mighty
name of the Savior who came for us, the name of Jesus, amen.